On Feb. 19, 1942, after the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, giving the secretary of war and all military branches the power to exclude people deemed a threat to national security from all militarily sensitive areas. Implementation of this order, left up to the secretary and military commanders, deemed the entire West Coast of the U.S. as “militarily sensitive.” As a result, all people of Japanese descent living in the western U.S., even American citizens, were forced out of their homes and into concentration camps for the duration of WWII.
Continue reading Kubota Garden Foundation Remembers Executive Order 9066Tag Archives: Japanese
Day of Remembrance: Commemorating Executive Order 9066
by Julia Park and Mark Van Streefkerk
On the first Day of Remembrance event held in 1978, Seattle author Frank Abe remembers being blown away by the turnout.
“There were hundreds of people just waiting to sign up,” Abe said. “And I mean a thousand people and hundreds of cars jamming the parking lot.” They were there to recreate the trip Japanese Americans took in WWII after the U.S. government forced adults and families into desolate incarceration camps.
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Consul General of Japan Hisao Inagaki Spreads Joy and Culture With Paper Cranes
by Amanda Ong
The Seattle Globalist was a daily online publication that covered the connections between local and global issues in Seattle. The Emerald is keeping alive its legacy of highlighting our city’s diverse voices by regularly publishing and re-publishing stories aligned with the Globalist’s mission.
It’s not often a consul general of Japan is also a social media phenomenon, but Consul General of Japan in Seattle Hisao Inagaki has received quite a bit of attention for his personal Instagram account featuring paper cranes. Since moving to Seattle in 2020, he has folded one origami paper crane, or “orizuru,” every day to pray for everyone’s health and peace during the pandemic, and he posts a video of the cranes every day on Instagram.
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Artist Roger Shimomura’s 100 ‘Little White Lies’
by Susan Kunimatsu
(This article previously appeared on the International Examiner and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
Like most of us, Roger Shimomura has spent the last 10 months in isolation; in his case, his home and studio in Lawrence, Kansas. For Shimomura, the pandemic has been an intellectually fertile, artistically prolific period. The result, 100 ”Little White Lies” is now on view at Greg Kucera Gallery. The 100 untitled paintings, each a 12 by 12-inch square, are numbered in the order in which they were created starting in late 2019. Hung in a single row that wraps around two galleries, they do not form a narrative. They are a stream of consciousness, a visual record of the ideas that occupied the artist during this strange year.
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Day of Remembrance 2021: Another Time, Another Place
by Stanley N Shikuma
Executive orders have been in the news a lot lately. Did you know there have been over 15,000 executive orders signed by 46 presidents in the history of the United States? More than 3,700 were signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) alone. Yet how many of those executive orders do you remember by number?
The only one I can think of is Executive Order (EO) 9066.
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PHOTOS: Attendees share in Japanese culture during Bunka no Hi
By Carolyn Bick
Though she didn’t celebrate Bunka no Hi herself, when she lived in Japan, Arisa Nakamura now celebrates the modern holiday alongside the community and her fellow Japanese Cultural and Community Center staff and volunteers.
This year marked the organization’s 14th annual celebration of Bunka no Hi, which Nakamura said was originally a celebration of the Emperor Meiji’s birthday, changing in 1948 to commemorate the post-WWII Japanese constitution. While it’s still a national holiday in Japan, it’s now about celebrating and sharing Japanese culture and art, she said.
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